A Portland, Oregon mother is suing her daughter’s school district after she was mercilessly beaten in a campus hallway while two adults, seemingly employed at the school, “stood by and watched.”
Video of the incident, shot in February 2024 and posted on Snapchat, shows 15-year-old Dania Kali being punched, kicked, grabbed and slapped around 80 times in a hallway at Roosevelt High School. A still frame captured from the video, recorded by Dania’s mother before Snapchat deleted it, is captioned, “Just another normal day at the Velt.”
Lannette Kali is now filing a lawsuit on behalf of her daughter, who suffered two black eyes, a swollen nose, headaches, vision problems, nausea and a concussion.
Dania was unable to attend school for nearly two weeks, her mother alleges, and she’s unable to concentrate for long periods of time. The school district showed no flexibility in accommodating Dania’s disabilities, the suit claims, and, due to failing grades she was required to attend four weeks of summer school.
Jacob Johnstun, Kali’s attorney, told Oregon Live that a head injury clinic recommended one year of therapy to help Dania handle dizziness and balance issues.
Little is known about her attacker, who remains unidentified, shielded by student privacy laws. That federal protection made it difficult for Dania’s mother to access any information about the fight, which the suit states started because the older girl didn’t like an expression on Dania’s face.
According to the suit, Dania’s mother was not informed her daughter had been in an altercation. Portland Public Schools administrators would not let her view a six-minute surveillance video of the incident and refused to say if or how the attacker was punished.
For parents of bullied children, Dania Kali’s story is not an outlier. The Oregonian reports many school administrations misunderstand those privacy laws, erring on the side of being overly restrictive.
Because the family filed a lawsuit, they are entitled to receive a copy of the school surveillance video that captured the fight from several angles. Previously, even police weren’t allowed to see the footage.
“The thing I’m most outraged and concerned about is that in the end, we still don’t know who attacked my daughter,” Lannette Kali said. “They (the school administrators) won’t tell us who they are so we can chat. …We can’t have a conversation about compassion. We can’t have a conversation about what led to this. We can’t have a conversation about whether this person understands their impact and how they hurt people.”
Perhaps the biggest mystery is the “incompetence and apathy,” as the suit puts it, shown by the Roosevelt High employees who witnessed the fight. The beating lasts for nearly one minute before a staff member eventually intervened and stopped it. Their identities have not been disclosed, as the school system has declined comment on the incident.
